Behold her, single in the field, Yon solitary Highland Lass! Reaping and singing by herself; Stop here, or gently pass! Alone she cuts, and binds the grain, And sings a melancholy strain; O listen! for the Vale profound Is overflowing with the sound. [Pg 49] No Nightingale did ever chaunt So sweetly to reposing bands Of Travellers in some shady haunt, Among Arabian sands: A voice so thrilling ne’er was heard In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird, Breaking the silence of the seas Among the farthest Hebrides. Will no one tell me what she sings? Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago: Or is it some more humble lay, Familiar matter of to-day? Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, That has been, and may be again? Whate’er the theme, the Maiden sang As if her song could have no ending; I saw her singing at her work, And o’er the sickle bending;— I listened till I had my fill, And when I mounted up the hill, The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more.

[Pg 49]

But there is another manifestation of the feminine note in English poetry, distinct from, though doubtless akin to, the one we have been considering; a note which likewise was not heard in it till about a hundred years ago, but which has been heard very frequently since, and which seems at times to threaten to become its dominant and all-prevailing note, or at any rate the only one that is keenly listened to. Instead of the note of interest in and pity for others, it has become the note of interest in and pity either for oneself, or for one’s other self; a note so strongly personal and suggestive as to become egotistic and entirely self-regarding.[Pg 50] This is the amatory or erotic note, which I think you will all recognise when I give it that designation; the note which appears to consider the love of the sexes as the only important thing in life, and certainly the only thing worth writing or singing about. More than two thousand years ago, a Greek poet wrote a lyric beginning, “I would fain sing of the heroes of the House of Atreus, I would fain chant the glories of the line of Cadmus; but my lyre refuses to sound any note save that of love.” In these days the poet who expressed that sentiment and acted on it would have a great many listeners; and no doubt Anacreon, too, had his audience in ancient Greece. But he was not ranked by them side by side with their great poets who did take the tragic story of the House of Atreus for their theme. It can only be when feminine influence is supreme in society and in literature, and when the feminine note in poetry has become, or threatens to become, paramount, that the sentiment and practice of 

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